Inmarsat confident about MH370 crash site, will continue search

Updated: Tuesday, June 17, 2014, 13:03 [IST]

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London, June 17: British satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat said that the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has yet to zero in on the area which its scientists think is the plane's most likely crash site, a media report said on Tuesday.

Inmarsat's communications with the aircraft are seen as the best clues to the whereabouts of MH370, BBC reported.

It was the brief, hourly electronic connections between the missing jet and one of Inmarsat's spacecraft that are currently driving the search. Inmarsat's scientists could tell from the timings and frequencies of the connection signals that the plane had crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.

Meanwhile, ships are currently mapping the Indian Ocean floor to locate the missing jet.

Few other groups also has named few more areas for the location of the jet which the Australian authorities will announce shortly.

According to reports, the Australian Defence Vessel (ADV) Ocean Shield never reached the Inmarsat hotspot because it picked up signals some distance away that it thought were coming from the jet's blackbox.

Ships are currently mapping the Indian Ocean floor to locate the missing jet

Inmarsat's experts used their data to plot a series of arcs across the Indian Ocean where its systems supposedly made contact with the jet. Inmarsat's team has found one flight path that lined up with all data matching that of the MH370.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished mysteriously about an hour after taking off for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur shortly after midnight March 8.

The Boeing 777-200ER was scheduled to land in Beijing the same morning. The 227 passengers on board included five Indians, 154 Chinese and 38 Malaysians.

The search for the missing jet is being conducted by Australia off its western coast up to an area 60,000 sq km in the southern Indian Ocean where underwater pings were detected earlier.

The Malaysian government said in a statement issued last week that the country will keep searching for MH370 for as long as it takes.